Wise Child

by Audrey Reimann

  Elsie merely smiled and said she'd keep it in mind. But she would not give the shop up. She couldn't now. Howard was having business troubles. He had taken her to Buxton last Wednesday afternoon and there, after they had taken tea in the Winter Gardens, they walked up to the old baths and drank the waters and Howard told her that they must postpone their marriage for a little while because his business partner had been cheating him. Elsie did not know about the partnership.

  There were tears in his eyes as he said, 'I cannot swallow my pride, Elsie, and go begging for a loan.'

  'I don't want you to borrow money, Howard,' she said. 'And I don't want to start married life under an obligation to anyone.'

  'Then perhaps your father could contribute,' he said.

  'Contribute to what?' she asked.

  'Our marriage, dear. We will need a house. If your father contributed and I obtained a mortgage from a building society…’

  'I can't ask Dad,' she said. Howard would not have suggested it if he knew Dad. Dad thought that building societies were lower than money-lenders. You paid your honourable rent, in Dad's book. The workhouses were full of people destitute through debt. Elsie said, 'We could live at the shop for a year or two. Until your business is on its feet.'

  'The shop is not your property, Elsie. I can't be expected to live under Chancellor's roof. Pay rent to that lecher? No. Unless we find somewhere suitable, it is our marriage that must wait for a year or two.'

  So, either Elsie raised the money herself, or the marriage was off. She must not let all she had ever wanted - a husband, social standing and respectability -mslip through her fingers. 'Leave it with me,' she said, 'I've seen a house I like, in Bollinbrook Road.'

  One morning, early in November, Mam said, 'Don't go to school today, love.'

  'Why?'

  'I've got the keys to a house in Bollinbrook Road.'

  'Opposite the cemetery? I didn't think there were any houses ...'

  'There's only one or two. Ours is ever so pretty from the outside. Half house, half bungalow. Pebbledash. A big garden, surrounded by farmland.'

  'Ours? Have we got it, then?'

  'Not yet. I want to see if you like it.' Mama smiled, seeing Isobel's excited face. 'We'll go to the solicitor's office afterwards.'

  Isobel went upstairs to change and Elsie gave instructions to the elderly Miss Duffield.

  She and Isobel reached Bollinbrook Road before ten o'clock, with Isobel chattering gaily all the way. 'I never knew there was a house here,' she said, for it was hidden from the road by a thicket of overgrown scented rosemary and hawthorn hedging. Woodland trees surrounded the garden, separating and sheltering it from the farmer's fields. There was a little orchard, where apples and pears lay rotting and scented in the long grass and the lawns either side of the crumbling gravel drive had become meadows full of weed, but there it was, in mock -Tudor splendour; a chalet-bungalow with the sun glancing off red pantiles and shining on leaded glass panes.

  Isobel's face wreathed in smiles that would not go down. 'I've fallen in love at first sight,' she said.

  She turned the key in the front door with trembling fingers, and once inside almost ran from room to room, exclaiming with delight. Downstairs were three rooms. a square hall and a kitchen. From the hall a flight of polished oak stairs went to three pretty bedrooms with sloping ceilings and dormer windows. And there was a bathroom, a white-tiled bathroom with a black and white tiled border. Isobel said, 'Oh Mam! Look at this,' at every turn until at last, done with the house, they went out of the back door. ‘It's so beautiful.'

  Then she left Mam sitting on a wooden bench in the garden, where the only sound was the insects buzzing about the dropped golden fruit. She went slowly round the house again, standing at windows to feast her eyes on fields and trees and to delight in there not being another dwelling in sight. No shops or passers-by. It was utterly private; perfect in every detail.

  Half an hour later she thumped down on to the seat. 'It's the nicest house I've ever seen.' She gave a great satisfied sigh. 'We are going to live here, aren't we?'

  Mam said. 'Not unless we pay for it. Poor Hah'd's factory has gone.'

  Isobel's euphoria was wiped out in an instant. Familiar sensations hit the pit of her stomach as she snapped out of her dreams of living here. 'Gone where? Factories can't go anywhere. What’s he talking about?'

  Mam got to her feet. 'Hah'd has to start all over again, borrow money from a trading company.' Then, as they set off towards the gate and the way home, 'He is a very determined man.'

  Isobel's heart was sinking to her boots. Something awful was coming. She let go of Mam's arm and stood still, facing her. 'Why have you kept me off school to look at the house when we won't be living there?'

  They had reached the comer where a red pillar box stood. Mam leaned against it and took Isobel's hands. 'I'm asking an awful lot. I couldn't ask Nanna or Grandpa for money. And I wouldn't do it unless I had to ...'

  'Do what?'

  'Will you sell your furniture? Your piano and bookcase? You said they are worth a lot. If I put in two hundred pounds and you put in the rest ...'

  Isobel felt sick. She had never owned anything of value until she came into her furniture. She looked away. She could not look at Mam but said, in a small voice. 'Would the house be half mine?'

  Mam smiled. 'You are a little mercenary. Of course it would be half yours. It will be all yours one day. I'll pay you back for the furniture as soon as I’ve got the money.'

  Isobel looked at her feet. 'You love him, don't you? You aren't marrying him just to be respectable or to put things right for me?'

  Mam didn't answer at once. Isobel saw that Mam’s eyes were very bright. Mam held fast on to her hands and said, 'I want to put things right for both of us. Howard loves me. I'll be a good wife. We'll go to church every Sunday like a proper happy family.' Then shyly, 'I want to be baptised and confirmed as well, love. We can be done together. I might even join the Mothers' Union.'

  Isobel gabbled now. 'Don't let him talk you into anything! He's older than you. Don't sign anything, will you? Don't sign away the property?' It was all she could think of, without the law books to refer to.

  A dealer was called in to view the pieces, and to Isobel's secret delight the piano was only worth three pounds. She was allowed to keep it, and the piano stool which was worth three pounds, ten shillings. But the honest dealer called in an expert to value the bookcase. He offered two hundred pounds. Mam sold it like a shot. Isobel ran to her room and wept.

  Howard needed to take out a mortgage for the remaining hundred pounds but the repayments were nothing. Mam told Isobel. Then, three weeks later, the knot was tied and they went directly to the new house after the wedding service. No honeymoon. No reception. They were going to get the house straight, her stepfather said, though he didn't say how, now he was ruined.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Isobel loved the house that her stepfather called his but which she and Mam had paid for. If he had allowed them to treat it like a proper home, like Lindow, Isobel might have been content, but Mr Leigh made it clear that they were not going to keep open house. Even Nanna would come by invitation only.

  Mr Leigh arranged the furniture. The front room was allowed to be filled with their belongings from Jordangate. The rest of the furniture was his. The dining room was soon crammed full, with a big oak table and a modem light oak sideboard loaded down with the 'Willey-Leigh family silver', as her stepfather called his collection of dented, black-speckled EPNS. They would never use this room. Meals were to be taken in the kitchen, on his orders.

  The last room, to the right of the front door, had originally been a small study. Isabel was allowed to call it hers, and she was truly grateful for this. She could keep out of her stepfather's way in her room, where her piano and a table Nanna had given her took up nearly all the space. She managed to squeeze in a little padded tub chair and the piano stool. She paid, from her own savings, for a carpenter to put up bookshelves
, floor to ceiling, on the narrow wall. Opposite her room was a hall table on which stood the telephone. Mr Leigh needed it for his customers. They were not to make calls, unless in an emergency.

  Control of the money was taken from Isobel. A man must be master in his own house, Mam said, so her stepfather paid the bills by cheque. Mam had a chequebook too. She was inordinately proud of it but had. been told only to use it for shop transactions.

  Control of Mam had also gone to him. He'd say, 'Time for injections, dear; and when Isobel made to get up and check that Mam was doing it right, 'No need for you to do it, Isobel. Your mother will have to attend to them when you are no longer here.'

  Their first Christmas came, but there were no decorations, no mince pies and no presents. Mam bought a chicken and an iced fruit cake. Every crumb was counted and there was no pleasing her stepfather, who looked down his nose at their preparations as if he were used to something better.

  Normally they went to Lindow and Isobel would be free to visit Sylvia and Magnus. She kept thinking of Nanna and Grandpa celebrating by themselves at Lindow, missing her as she missed them. The thought of the Hammond family gathering with Ian and Rowena made her want to cry. Mr Leigh had forbidden any contact with the Hammond family.

  She tried to please, and she told God that it was dishonest to take Mr Leigh's name and let him become her father without treating him with respect. She tried very hard to like and respect him and being almost grown-up, she'd have to convince the judge at the court that she wanted to be Mr Leigh's adopted daughter, but she discovered that it was one thing to say she would love and respect someone and quite another to stop her flesh from cringing when he squeezed past her in a narrow doorway or winked at her behind Mam's back.

  It soon became obvious to Isobel that marriage was not bringing contentment to Mam nor pleasure to Mr Leigh, who was evidently a disappointed man. He grew angry at the least opposition to his will and swung from over-familiarity and false bonhomie to complaint, bullying and more and more rules.

  'Isobel! No invitations to be accepted without my approval.'

  She had to be in the house by six o'clock and would not be allowed out in the evenings. He could not stop her weekends at Nanna's, because they were established but lsobel did not mention the Saturday afternoons she spent with Sylvia and Magnus. She mostly sat alone in her room, for she couldn't stand being cooped up with them while Mam did cut-work embroidery - an accomplishment she had previously despised while her stepfather read aloud from the Macclesfield Courier, sneering at Macclesfield while giving his opinions an airing. 'I see the workers at the Neckwear factory are striking. I know what I'd do with them!' He would go on at length about strikes: 'If there's one thing I can't stand it's the feckless poor,' he said one evening.

  'Yesterday it was the idle rich you hated,' Isobel reminded him. She would not let him get away with any more poisonous observations about Macclesfield and its people. 'Why do you live in Macclesfield if you can't say anything good about us?'

  He spluttered with temper. 'I said it was the idle poor I have no time for,' he said. 'Nor has your mother. Have you, Elsie?'

  Before Mam could answer, Isobel said, 'Last night you said the Hammonds were idle parasites. They have the biggest silk mill in Macclesfield.'

  He turned on her. 'What do you know about it?' He could not stand for her to disagree with him. He demanded of Elsie. 'Did you hear what she said?'

  Mam said, 'Isobel's been practically brought up with them, Hah'd,' and went on smiling and sewing, acting the role of the little wife. As she sewed she sipped the sherry he'd poured for her. She never had more than two, but she told Isobel that they went to her head very quickly since she'd been on insulin.

  Her stepfather never recognised the signs. Mam would appear sober and quiet, the level of sherry in her glass barely dropping, excusing herself from the room every fifteen minutes or so, saying, 'Won't be a minute, Hah'd. Just going to put a light on,' or to check something in another room. After each exit she came back into the room grown steadily more and more drunk and wobbly, avoiding Isobel's eye and muttering, 'Oops, Lil! I mean, Isobel! Nearly tripped over you then.'

  Isobel knew the difference between low levels of insulin and plain drunkenness but in all of this new way of being the subservient little woman, Mam kept a hold on her old life. She would not give up her business, though Mr Leigh was desperate for control and Miss Duffield hinted that her dressmaker niece would like a partnership. Mam did not want a partner. Keeping the shop was the only sensible thing Mam had done, in Isobel's opinion.

  For herself - Isobel was counting the days until she would be out of it at her new school in Southport.

  *…*..*

  'Isobel Leigh?'

  'Isobel Leigh,' she repeated mechanically as the register was called. She tried to show some interest, but biology lessons at St Ursula's were a thorough waste of a perfect afternoon. St Ursula's was a pettifogging, tuppence-ha'penny school, and after almost a year Isobel hated it.

  'Isobel Leigh! I'm surprised at you!'

  She had sneezed and before she could find a handkerchief, stood up quickly. 'Pardon me ... Oh, I mean, beg pardon!' There was a burst of tittering laughter from the others.

  'Isobel! Don't stand up. Well-brought-up girls never beg anyone's pardon. Find your handkerchief, sneeze quietly and if you feel you have to draw attention to it, simply say, "Sorry…",

  'Yes, Miss Porter.' Isobel sat down.

  'Pay attention, Isobel!' Miss Porter tapped her ruler on the table and the room went quiet again. She gave a little cough before turning to the book on the table in front of her. 'When the male stickleback wishes to attract a female, his, er ... underside becomes an attractive shade of pink. He dances and displays before her. Just as the peacock did, girls, if you remember.' She glanced around to see that nobody was giggling, and went on, 'He too, the peacock, tempted his…er… his mate..' She said 'mate' very fast and hurried on '…by the splendid fan of his tail feathers.'

  This was supposed to be a lesson on reproduction. Isobel's eyes wandered to the window again, where an expanse of inviting blue sky soared above the sycamore trees making her long for escape. With every day that passed the feeling was growing in her that she was in the wrong place. Was she homesick, even though she received a letter from Magnus every week and, regularly spoke to Mam on the telephone? Or was her anxiety a sixth sense that all was not well? She had to close her ears to the impelling voice that told her to break out, to get back to Macclesfield where she belonged, looking after Mam. Mam's diabetes was out of control, because her stepfather ignored the signs and Mam was careless and forgetful, leaving it until the last minute to take a glucose drink or give herself an injection.

  She was no use to Mam here at St Ursula's, where the only thing that counted was your father's position and bank balance. It was not good value for money, and that offended. Everything they were given over the basic tutoring and board was charged for. Little chits had to be signed for repayment if they broke a plate or lost a pencil. Cakes at Sunday tea were an extra. The beds were cold. There was not enough to eat and a kind of stifling politeness of manner was expected at all times, especially when allowed out on Wednesday afternoons in twos, unaccompanied but conspicuous in long plum-coloured barathea coats with matching velour hats. How could Mam afford it? Mam had less money not more since she married. Isobel was sure her stepfather didn't pay the school fees, so this school must be taking every penny Mam earned.

  The chasm between her and the other girls was unbridgeable. They were rich. She was not. They had money in the bank. Some of them had as much as ten pounds in pocket money each month. Mam sent her a five-shilling postal order once a fortnight, to 'keep her end up'. The other girls invited one another home for weekends. Isobel stayed at school.

  There were only six of them in school on Saturdays and Sundays, the rules were slack and, when they had only one inattentive teacher to watch them, Isobel would seize her chance, sneak over the garden wall and
dash down to town. She'd ring Mam, as if she were ringing from school; then, satisfied that Mam was well, she'd buy a quarter-pound of chocolate gingers and a ticket for one of the Saturday matinees at a picture bouse.

  After the first time, it was easy. lsobel knew it was wrong but it became a challenge, to get away with it again and again. She'd sit in the darkness, amazed at her own daring, lost in the wonder of the cinema. She saw the dashing Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty and Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina. She saw the funeral procession of their beloved King George. And she told herself that the worrying things that were shown on the newsreels - the Tannenberg rally and the Nuremberg decrees, what Adolf Hitler was doing in Germany in this modem, enlightened year of 1936 - could only happen abroad.

  Jews and Aryans were forbidden to marry. Couples of mixed blood were called race-defilers and could be arrested on the spot. Race-defilers, diabetics and haemophiliacs were being put down like animals. Sterilisation was too good for them. There was no mercy. If this were Germany they would have to resist the arrest of her diabetic Mam, and probably Magnus.

  *…*…*

  Magnus would soon be nineteen. He had been working responsibly, doing a man's job for years, and he would not put up with it again. He was not prepared to sit like an imbecile while his mother talked to Mr Meiklejohn over his head. He insisted on seeing the specialist by himself this time.

  And here, in the consulting room at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, Magnus sat, dressed only in a gown, waiting with bated breath for the expert's opinion. His joints had been checked, urine samples had been taken and analysed and he'd been weighed and measured.

  'Well, Magnus.' Mr Meiklejohn smiled. 'I think you can look forward to a period of good health.'

  'No traces?' It was a year since he'd bled, anywhere.

  'None. The only worry is your joints. You have special shoes?'